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Endurance
I am reminded of my mother and all she had endured, the many storms of life she weathered. Her father, (her world), died of stomach cancer when she was only sixteen.
She met my father, a man that never loved her. She had eight children with this man. She suffered at his hand, abuse of every kind. He married two other women and she never gave up hope, never divorced. She loved him as much as she hated him.
She went from growing up in an upper middle class family with summer homes and even servants, to living on welfare in the slums of New York. She suffered a life time of rejection from her only family. She endured diabetes and all its implications. It was an argument and perhaps the abuse, from the man they call my father that caused her ninth child to die before he could be born.
My mother was a beautiful, strong woman who believed in the good, despite page after page of her life screaming at her otherwise. As a child she taught me a valuable lesson. Never blame God for the evil choices men make, and never give up hope. As a young woman my mother’s life taught me never let life’s circumstances determine your steps.
My mother died at the age of fifty four, alone, in a halfway house, of neglect, with six of her own grown children in the same county. In her death my mother taught me that death its self is not the greatest loss in life. I believe that my mother died of a broken heart long before the disease she suffered stole her last breath.
The sun bursting forth to host a new day never fails to amaze me. We can experience every kind of evil in the darkest of night. Tragedy and heartache touches our lives as we move through this enigma we embrace as life. Yet the sun never fails to come through and welcome a new day. I believe that it is love that propels the world to turn and the new days to burst forth. The love between a man and woman, the love a mother has for her child. These are the things that get us through our daily lives, for some of us it is the very reason we bother to breath. But I believe it is the love that never fails, the love that held Jesus to the cross for each of us, the enduring love of God that consistently prevails. It has been my experience that “His mercies are new every morning” and there is “nothing that can separate us from the love of God”.
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